One question at Randy Moss Ring of Honor announcement leaves him in tears

Randy Moss slipped in the 1998 NFL draft all the way to 21st because of “character issues,” but one coach took a chance on him, launching a Hall of Fame career for one of the most explosive wide receivers the game has seen.

The Minnesota Vikings announced this week that Moss will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor, and that coach no doubt looked down from the afterlife with pride.

When asked at a press conference what he would say to Dennis Green, who died July 21, 2016, following a heart attack, Moss lost his composure, overcome with emotion and reduced to tears.

After putting himself back together, Moss said, “I was 6 years old, playing this game. On draft day, I really don’t know why I was treated the way I was treated on draft day, but Coach Green gave me an opportunity, man. And I told him, ‘Coach, you’re not gonna regret this.’ So, you ask me what I would say to him, man I’d probably just fall in his arms and give him a hug.”

In Moss’ case, the character questions seemed to stem from his high school days, when he went to jail for battery after a fight and for a probation violation after he tested positive for marijuana.

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Green was the one who looked past all of that, seeing only a young man who needed the right environment in order to thrive.

And indeed, Moss was only as good as his environment during his NFL career. In Minnesota under Green for his first four seasons, Moss scored a total of 53 touchdowns, led the league in trips to the end zone twice, and made himself a household name as a deep threat.

Meanwhile, when he went to Oakland in 2005 and ’06, playing under Norv Turner and Art Shell on teams that went a combined 6-26, Moss’s old demons came out, his reputation sinking so far after scoring only three touchdowns in 2006 that he went to New England for the bargain-basement price of a fourth-round draft pick in 2007.

In his first year with the Patriots, Moss caught 98 balls for 1,493 yards and a league-leading 23 touchdowns, good for an approximate value of 20, by Pro Football Reference’s estimation the 13th-best season of all time as of that year and better even than anything he did in Minnesota as a much younger man.

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And if Tom Brady hadn’t so badly overthrown a ball that even Moss couldn’t run under it with a minute to go in Super Bowl XLII, nobody would be talking about the “Helmet Catch” and Moss would’ve had the one thing that eluded him in his 14-year career: a ring.

The point is that Dennis Green knew what kind of person Randy Moss could be — a guy who works his tail off when he has something to work for. Moss never forgot that leadership that set his life on a successful track, and it’s good to see Green’s faith justified.